


Sweet Light

by sibley (ferns)



Series: Tikkun Olam [7]
Category: Stargirl (TV 2020)
Genre: Connecting with Heritage, F/M, Family Bonding, Friendship, Gen, Hanukkah, Jewish Identity, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28032189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Rick hasn't celebrated Hanukkah in close to ten years. He wasn't really expecting that to change.
Relationships: Beth Chapel/Rick Tyler, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Tikkun Olam [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/584341
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	Sweet Light

**Author's Note:**

> Chag sameach everyone! I hope your Hanukkah is warm and comforting this year. If you're new here, this isn't actually part of a series, just a collection I use for works very heavily focusing on Judaism/Jewish identity.
> 
> This is specifically pre-relationship for Beth and Rick, but the site is weirdly persnickety about tagging pre-relationships in the relationship tag, so I'm still not totally sure how the tags will reformat themselves after I publish this, and I'm sorry if it messes it up for you. 
> 
> This is definitely very lighthearted but there's still some implications/references to child abuse and neglect, so tread carefully. I also put a lot of feelings about my own reconnection to Judaism in here, even though my disconnection was much different.

“Rick, could I talk to you for a minute? The rest of you can go on ahead.”

Rick pauses and glances back at Pat, who waves at him like he thinks he didn’t notice he was the one who asked him the question. “...Sure.”

“I’ll be over here by the door,” Beth says, motioning for Courtney and Yolanda to keep going. She smiles. “You said you were gonna walk me home, so I’ll just wait for the two of you to be done.”

Pat watches Rick relax just slightly. He wonders if Beth noticed that Rick felt better when he didn’t have to be alone in a room with Pat—or Justin, before he’d left—or if the goggles did it for her first. “That’s fine. It’ll only take a second. I just want to know if he’s—if  _ you’re _ doing anything tomorrow night.”

“No. Why?” The entirety of Rick’s plans begin and end with whatever the rest of the team is doing. Or sometimes with what just one of them is doing, if Yolanda wants a sparring partner who won’t kiss her in the middle of fighting to distract her or if Courtney wants to hang out or if Beth wants anything. And very rarely if Pat asks him to come look at a car with him. Pat should know that by now. 

Pat shrugs. “We’re having a little holiday dinner. You don’t have to feel obligated to bring a gift or dress up or anything like that, but it  _ would _ just be you and us, if that’s okay, because Yolanda’s busy and Beth already has plans with her parents.”

Rick, admittedly, isn’t totally sure why the Whitmores are having a holiday dinner within the first two weeks of December, but their whole family is kind of weird like that. And Courtney will be there. So it’s not like he’ll be on his own in there. She can watch his back. “Uh. Okay. I’ll come.”

“Great! I’ll see you after school.” Pat motions for him and Beth to go. “We’re going to go light on the training, I have a meeting with one of Mike’s teachers from four-thirty to five and I don’t want you all to over-exert yourselves without me. Maybe keep working on Chuck. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.” 

Rick and Beth are halfway to the latter’s house before Rick voices his confusion about why the Whitmores aren’t waiting to have their mini-party until it’s actually Christmas.

Beth blinks at him, confused. “...It’s the first night of Hanukkah tomorrow night,” she says. “That’s why they’re having the dinner, and that’s why I can’t come, because my parents and I always do something special.”

“Courtney’s Jewish?” Rick really might’ve sworn she isn't, with all that talk about how excited she is for Christmas. She’s apparently the only person in the world who enjoys owning and wearing Christmas sweaters. That doesn’t  _ seem _ very Jewish to him.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But Pat and Mike are. Didn’t you know that?” Beth tilts her head. “There’s a mezuzah on the door of his house. And at the Pit Stop.”

“I never noticed.” Rick’s not sure if that’s totally true, because now he can remember the little metal box on the frame of the main door of the Pit Stop, the one that didn’t lead directly to the garage, and the popsicle stick-and-tape thing that was at Courtney’s house. But he definitely never really thought about it before. It’s not like he recognized mezuzahs (was that the right plural? It didn’t sound right in his head) on sight or anything.

“You know I’m Jewish too, right?” Beth says. She jumps over a puddle and crashes directly into him. He steadies her without a second thought. “Just on my dad’s side. But it still counts.”

Rick nods. She’s got a necklace with a six-pointed star on it that she wears sometimes in exchange for or in tandem with her little rainbow one. That’s a pretty strong signal. And she’s mentioned keeping kosher before while talking to Pat about family dinners, or something.

They don’t have time to talk about anything else before they get to Beth’s house. She gives him a side hug and a cheerful “See you tomorrow morning!” that she waits for him to hesitantly echo before scurrying up the path and through the door. Rick finds himself waving after her. For a moment Beth’s face briefly pops up at the front window and she waves back before disappearing entirely.

Rick meanders on his route back to his house instead of taking the straight shot, partially to give him time to think and partially out of necessity, because the later he arrives the less likely he is to cross paths with Matt. If Beth’s parents weren’t supposed to be back early for the first time that month, she would’ve invited him in. 

He wonders if he should’ve said something about how he’s pretty sure  _ he’s _ supposed to be Jewish, too. 

He doesn’t really remember a whole lot about that. But he knows there used to be one of those mezuzahs on his door, before his parents died. And they used to… the memory is hard to hold onto, but he tries to focus on it. They used to… something. He’d have to peel eggs. The memory of the shells pricking his hands is strong. And there was a dish full of something that smelled so sharp it burnt his nose, and something that tasted like nuts. He remembers his dad guiding his hand with something warm and dripping wax between his fingers, a candle flimsier than the thick ones in their cabinets but sturdier than the tiny matchstick-sized birthday ones…

And that’s it, really. Nothing else. He doesn’t even remember which of his parents were Jewish, or if it was both of them. Did that make  _ Matt  _ Jewish, too, if it had been his mom, or both of his parents? Because he’d torn the mezuzah down from their door and thrown out the candles and sold the branched silver thing that held those candles—menorah, it’s called a menorah, he’s pretty sure he remembers that, it’s either that or a hanu… not  _ Hanukkah,  _ that’s the name of the holiday, but it’s something like that—at the first opportunity.

It isn’t really anything Rick’s thought about in years. When they did their World War II unit in fourth grade, maybe, but they hadn’t really talked much about anything real. When Matt had gotten rid of all that stuff he’d been upset, but only out of sentimental attachment to things that had belonged to his  _ real  _ parents.

He hopes Pat doesn’t expect him to do anything at his dinner. He probably won’t, right? Because he implied that he invited Yolanda, and he wouldn’t expect  _ her  _ to do anything, would he? She’s definitely not Jewish. So maybe they won’t ask him to do anything. 

Rick manages to forget how nervous he is about it when the anxiety is replaced by fresh apprehension as he approaches the house. He gets lucky, though, and Matt’s already asleep on the couch by the time Rick slips through the door and up the stairs into his room. 

He’ll think about it tomorrow. On the actual day-of.

* * *

Rick does not think about it tomorrow (now today) until Beth shyly says to Pat that both of her parents had separate work events come up so she didn’t have any plans tonight after all, so would it be okay if she came over? Her voice shakes when she says it, which means Rick only thinks about the actual event for a second before anger and resentment directed at the Chapels takes hold. 

He hugs Beth for several minutes before passing her off to Yolanda and Courtney when they both indicate that they also want a turn comforting her. At least she has them. To tell her that her parents aren’t the only ones who love her. That’s nice, Rick supposes. And so that’s what he thinks about until “training” is done and Pat tells him to hop in the car, he’ll drop Yolanda at her house and then drive the remaining three kids back to the Whitmore house.

Rick squishes in the backseat with Beth and Yolanda—Beth, of course, is in the middle—while Courtney happily takes her roomy passenger seat, which she says is her right as the person with the second-highest claim to the car and the Pit Stop in general. Pat says that isn’t legally binding. Courtney always gets to sit shotgun anyway.

Courtney hangs out the window to wave goodbye to Yolanda, promising that she’ll save a doughnut from dinner for her. Rick wasn’t aware doughnuts were even going to be involved tonight. Were doughnuts usually present during Pat’s holiday dinners?

“I already made dinner this morning while you kids were at school,” Pat says, motioning for Courtney to roll up her window. Rick agrees. It’s  _ cold  _ out. “But we’ve got a little while before then, and Barb’s still finishing up, so feel free to relax once we get to the house, okay?”

_ “If  _ Mike hasn’t destroyed the house by now,” Courtney says, sing-songing. 

“Nothing is getting destroyed this year,” Pat says firmly. “Mike has had his candle access limited. He can light all of them on the last night as long as he doesn’t have any more  _ incidents  _ during the other seven.”

Courtney turns around in her seat so she can explain to Beth and Rick. “Last year Mike almost burned their whole apartment complex down because he got excited.” She rolls her eyes. “He  _ says _ it was an accident, but…”

“It  _ was _ an accident.” Pat turns the corner of the block their house is on. “Don’t worry, you two. It wasn’t as big of a deal as she’s making it out to be, and it’s not going to happen again.”

Courtney rolls her eyes again and turns back to face the road as Pat pulls into the driveway. “Anyway, he’d better like Mom’s gift, because I put my name on it.”

Rick’s stomach clenches as the car parks and they file out of it. Pat had said he didn’t need to feel obligated to dress up or bring a gift. And he definitely didn’t do either of those things. But if the Whitmores are going to be giving each other gifts, will they be silently disappointed that he doesn’t have anything? He can’t back out now, Beth’s already holding his hand and pulling him into the house, rainbow charm on her backpack swinging as she carefully hangs it on one of the coat hooks. He doesn’t have any other choice but to go through with… this.

The house is warm and cheerful and it smells like french fries, so it’s easy for Rick to let himself relax as Beth lets go of his hand and waves to Barb in the kitchen. Personally, Rick thinks they may have to be a little more worried about her burning down the house than Mike. The food she makes doesn’t taste  _ bad,  _ per-say, and he even likes some of it, but watching her cook always feels a bit dangerous. Still, he’s seen her put out grease fires before, so it’s probably fine. 

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Pat says. “Have a snack, there’s some chips, just… make sure the dog doesn’t get them, alright?” 

Courtney waves for them to sit down on the couch, and Rick keeps himself plastered to Beth as Mike runs past them and sprints up the stairs, something small and powdery clutched in his hand. Doughnut. Huh.

“Just warning you, Mom’s latkes are kinda… crispy,” Courtney says as they all sit. “They’re still good, and Pat says they’re not breaking any rules or anything, but they’re a little crunchy.”

“I’m going to get it right this year!” Barb shouts from the kitchen. “Pat and Mike already taste-tested for me!”

“I’m sure they’re very good, Mrs. Whitmore,” Beth earnestly calls back. “What’d Pat make, if your mom’s making latkes?”

“Chicken. It smelled really good, but he didn’t make it last year so I dunno how it tastes.” She shrugs. “It’s Pat’s food, though. It’s always good.”

Rick doesn’t add anything. It’s all food. He’s going to eat it regardless, prior thoughts about how Barb’s food sometimes isn’t the best and all. He’s still mostly concerned with what he’s supposed to do if they start giving each other gifts. He doesn’t expect that they’re going to have any for him, and likely not for Beth, but won’t they have them for the people actually  _ in  _ their family? 

Maybe Mike and Courtney won’t have them for their parents but the reverse won’t be true. Or maybe just Pat will have gifts for just Mike because they’re the two Jewish ones? Is that how it goes? Rick doesn’t  _ remember  _ celebrating Hanukkah, not any stronger than the vague feeling of warmth and spots in his eyes from looking at flickering lights for too long, he doesn’t know how it works!

“Rick, hey,” Beth says, nudging his knee gently to pull him back. He jolts a little and leans into her more. Beth’s safe. She knows the most about what’s going on here, because she’s Jewish (half or otherwise) and she’s his friend and Courtney’s only one of those things. He hopes it hasn’t been too long since he’s said anything. “Dinner’s starting. We’re doing candles after.”

Mike apparently came back downstairs at some point while Rick was lost in thought, because he’s already sitting at the table and spooning sour cream onto his plate. Beth wrinkles her nose and Courtney laughs at her expression. It’s not mean and Courtney’s safe and their friend, but Rick unconsciously tenses his shoulders regardless until Beth laughs back.

“I’m an applesauce person,” she explains as she sits down. Rick settles in next to her immediately.

“Pat too,” Courtney says. “But I don’t think he’s even willing to  _ try  _ sour cream. He refused to have any of the ketchup when Mike and I said it was good.”

“Please don’t bring up that abomination,” Pat says as he carries in a massive tray of chicken. It smells even better than the rest of the house already does, and Rick remembers how much dedication Pat puts into making meals for people. “Ketchup is banned this year.”

Before Courtney and Mike can start rioting, Barb comes in and sets down her own platter of crispy potato pancakes, and Rick braces his elbows against the table as a sudden memory comes flickering back to the surface.

It’s old and blurry but he can damn near taste them, and there’s something small and plastic in his hands and he can hear his mom laughing from somewhere, and his dad’s distant voice saying  _ something  _ that he can’t make out through the haze of time.

That’s as vivid as he can get. But desperate to see if he can call up more memories past the stifled  _ block  _ he always feels when he tries to think of things from before nine or ten at the latest, he piles food onto his plate without waiting for any further prompting. Pat won’t be mad. He’s not mad at Mike for it now, and for some reason he makes an exception for Rick when it comes to the table manners thing. He says it’s because Rick needs to eat more and that takes precedence, and Courtney says it’s because Pat has the spirit of a grandmother who loves watching people eat their homemade food.

There’s no fanfare or toasts before everyone else starts eating dinner, just conversation that happens around him. Well, lighthearted arguments more than conversation. Mike tries to tell Beth every detail about the early Christmas gift he got from Barb until Courtney tells him that if he keeps talking about his stupid tarantula while she’s eating dinner she’s going to spit in his sour cream and then Pat and Barb tell her not to do that but also tell Mike that they  _ really  _ don’t want to hear about his new pet, either. Rick doesn’t engage or get engaged by them until he’s started on his third piece of chicken.

He hopes this is normal. That he’s been able to tune out so many things in one evening. He’s pretty sure it is, because Yolanda does it sometimes while she’s training, just focuses on exactly that and doesn’t listen to anything anybody says around her. It’s just focusing, really.

“So, Rick,” Pat says, putting down his glass of… honestly, Rick isn’t sure, but it doesn’t smell like alcohol, so it doesn’t set him on edge. (Barb doesn’t have alcohol either, even though she’d usually break out some nice red wine. It’s purposeful. They never bring out anything alcoholic while Rick’s around, though he may not have  _ noticed  _ that it’s deliberate.) “Have you done anything for Hanukkah these past few years?”

Rick swallows a bite of apple and potato. “Uh… no.”

Beth takes his hand just so she can squeeze it under the table. “We haven’t done anything huge either,” she says. “We usually do something special for the first night.” She shrinks in on herself a little for just a second. “But we don’t really do as much for Hanukkah as we do for Christmas.”

“Would either of you feel comfortable doing any of the blessings later?” Pat asks. 

Rick freezes. For a minute embarrassment crawls up his throat, and he ducks his head down. What does he have to be embarrassed about? That he can’t do it? That’s not  _ his  _ fault, it’s  _ Matt’s,  _ just like everything else is. Why the hell is he  _ ashamed?  _ Why does his throat feel tight like he’s close to crying? This is so  _ stupid. _

“Oh, I can do all three!” Beth says easily. This time she gently puts her hand on Rick’s arm. “I usually do them all at home, anyway. My dad says I have a really good voice for it.”

“Actually, I’m going to do one tonight,” Courtney says, impaling some chicken on her fork. She’s using it to blockade a small spot of ketchup that she somehow managed to put on her plate from Pat’s view. “The last one.”

Mike frowns. He has a sour cream mustache that Barb covertly mimes for him to wipe away. “But you’re not—”

“I’m doing it,” Courtney insists. She glares at him and Rick would guess that she kicks him under the table judging by the way he hisses and glares back. “I  _ am.” _

“Of course you can do it, sweetie,” Barb says. She exchanges a glance with Pat. “We just didn’t know you wanted to, that’s all.”

“Yeah, you can do it as long as you’re fast,” Mike says into his latkes. “I want to get to gifts. And dessert.”

Rick’s chest seizes up. So there  _ are  _ going to be gifts. He reminds himself again that Pat said gifts weren’t required from him. But maybe Beth and Courtney will feel bad, if he doesn’t have anything for them, even though Courtney’s not Jewish. He doesn’t want that, he  _ likes  _ them.

“Sure, Mike. It never takes very long.” Pat’s looking at Courtney curiously, and she avoids his gaze without sacrificing the secrecy of her hidden ketchup.

Rick keeps his head down and eats and tries not to get too worried about the impending gift-giving. At least he’ll get to hear Beth do the blessings. That will be nice. Maybe it’ll remind him of more stuff he’s forgotten—things he suddenly hates himself for forgetting, even though it never used to bother him at all before. He never cared about it. Why is it sticking in his head now?

It’s stupid. He was only six and a half when his parents died. If it was important, he would’ve remembered it, right? People are able to remember things from that recently, or at least they’re supposed to. If it was important, wouldn’t he remember it? Why does it feel like there’s a hole in him that he  _ wants  _ to fill, not something he left empty on purpose?

The food goes fast, despite the sheer amount of it and how hard Rick tries to make it last. Barb’s latkes really  _ are  _ good, albeit still a little crunchy, and the cinnamon applesauce Rick guesses Pat made himself goes perfectly with it. The chicken isn’t dry, and whatever sauce it’s been marinating in winds up coating Rick’s whole plate. He doesn’t finish his food quite as fast as Mike does, but it’s close.

At least they manage to convince Mike  _ not  _ to bring his spider down to the table to meet Rick and Beth in person for the first time by promising that they’ll go up to his room and say hi to her later. Rick  _ is  _ genuinely interested, even if he’s not too sure about the plan to hold her after Mike explained that they can impale people with their hairs in self-defense and that it really hurts if you’re allergic to it. But it’s distracting enough that Rick lets himself get shepherded over to the window after bringing his plate to the sink.

True to his word in the car, Pat shoos Mike back away from the two candles that have already been carefully positioned and pulls a lighter out of his pocket. “Rick, do you want to light it tonight?”

Rick freezes again. Is there a specific way to light it that he’s supposed to know? He’s got a lighter, so there’s not, like, a ritualistic thing he has to use to light them, right? He looks at Beth for help, and she gives him a double thumbs-up.

“Here,” Pat says, and lights the candle held in the middle. There’s a name for it, Rick’s sure there’s a name for it, it starts with  _ sh- _ or something. The wick doesn’t catch for a second, and it makes a little hiss when it does, and the smell of it goes through Rick so fast he has to clench and unclench his fingers so they won’t shake.

Oh. He  _ does  _ remember this. And it’s only the first night, so it’ll be easy.

Rick carefully lifts the blue and white striped candle from the center and uses it to light the other one. Beth starts speaking from behind him, but even though he recognizes them the words aren’t at all familiar enough for him to join in. Her voice  _ is  _ nice for it, though, and she properly chants the blessing while Mike accompanies her in whispered monotone.  _ Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu… _

The candle almost falls when Rick tries to put it back in place until Pat motions for him to pass the bottom of it through the flame of the second now-lit candle. He does, and only burns his hand a little on the wax when he pushes it back into the holder.

Beth goes right into the next one, and this time Mike doesn’t join in past the first bit, just makes sounds that are vaguely in the direction of words like he isn’t totally sure he knows the whole thing. Pat murmurs along for all of it, though, and Rick really wishes he could, too.

_...Bayamim hahem bazman hazeh.  _

Rick forces himself to step back from the menorah as Beth looks expectantly at Courtney, who takes a deep breath and puffs out her cheeks.

“Sorry if it’s not good,” she offers. “I’ve been practicing, but I’m not good at the tune, and I don’t know what the words actually mean, so… I tried, okay?”

_ “I  _ won’t know if you get it wrong,” Barb says wryly, hugging Courtney from the side. “Just go for it.”

“Uh. Okay. Um…” Courtney takes another deep breath. “Baruch-atah-Adonai, Eloheinu Melech-ha’olam, she-heck-eyanu—” She closes her eyes for a second to remember the right order of the next two words. “Vekiyamanu, vehigiyanu, lazman hazeh.” She scrunches up her face and opens one eye. “How was that—oof!”

Rick can’t help but twitch a bit when Pat rushes over to Courtney and pulls her into a big hug. Beth takes his arm comfortingly and he leans a little closer to her.

“That was perfect,” Pat says, voice choked and heavy with emotion. He tucks her head against his chest for a moment and squeezes her tightly. (She did that for  _ him,  _ because she wanted to be a  _ part  _ of it, Jewish or not. She wanted to be there with them and that means… more than he could really say.) “Really, really perfect.”

Mike loudly fake coughs into his fist until everyone looks at him. “Yeah, you love each other, let’s do gifts!”

Pat sighs and Courtney extracts herself from the hug. She grins and her eyes glitter like she’s not far off from crying. (She did that for  _ him,  _ because she wanted to be a  _ part  _ of it, Jewish or not. She wanted to be there and he thought that was enough and that means… more than she could really say.) “Yeah, I want my present.”

“I have gifts too!” Beth says. She lets go of Rick. “They’re in my backpack, I’ll go get them!”

She rushes off, leaving Rick to mentally flounder. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

“I’ve got gifts for you two too, Rick, Beth,” Pat says. He produces a pair of well-wrapped gifts from nowhere, one hard and rectangular and the other much more soft. He presses the rectangular one into Rick’s hands before he can react, then gives the other to Beth when she comes scurrying back in with her backpack in her arms. “And there’s one for Yolanda, but I’ll give it to her tomorrow.”

Rick picks at the dark blue and silver wrapping paper. It’s somewhat heavy. He’d guess it’s a book. His throat feels tight. Gifts. They got him a gift. Pat—probably with Barb’s contribution—got him a gift. For a holiday he hasn’t celebrated in nearly ten years with people who are the best things that’s ever happened to him.

Courtney’s already pulling the paper off of the package handed to her by Barb while elbowing Beth and telling her excitedly to open her gift from Pat, while Mike attacks his own small box with all the style and dignity of a squirrel trying to break through a screen window. Rick hugs his present close while he watches Courtney grin and hold up a pair of glimmering star-shaped earrings (with a winking blue light in the middle that he just  _ knows  _ doubles as a tracking device) and Beth quietly gasp over the soft leather falconry glove with an owl stitched into the wrist—

Mike  _ screams. _

Rick jumps about three feet into the air and grabs for Beth and Courtney, barely managing not to drop his gift. Adrenaline shoots through him, and he wonders if it’s Sportsmaster, Tigress, Grundy attacking the house, something  _ worse… _

Mike holds up what looks like a pair of simple silver bracelets to catch the light before slipping them onto his wrists, smiling wide enough that he surely must be hurting his face. “For real?”

“They’re for self defense  _ only,”  _ Pat stresses. “If you use them for anything else, we’ll know. And don’t get any ideas, because the charge is pretty low, and it takes a lot of willpower and time to properly attune them, it took Syl weeks before he could make proper shooting stars—”

He’s cut off by Mike zapping a small piece of tape and wrapping paper. Somehow, his grin gets even bigger. So much for a few weeks worth of training for concentration and intense focus. Mike looks up at his dad and Barb and excitedly snaps his fingers on both hands next to his ears before taking off running, doing two laps around the dining room table before halting while vibrating with excitement.

“Best Hanukkah ever,” he says gleefully before sitting on the floor and patting his chest. “Buddy, do pressure.” He flops onto his back when the dog trots over to him and lies down on top of him, taking deep breaths while his fingers twitch.

“He’s never gonna shut up until you give him the full converter belt now,” Courtney laughs. She pokes Rick, who’s still trying to slow his heart rate after being startled, in the ribs. “Hey, you haven’t opened your present.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Rick tears through the paper, unable to put it off any longer. 

It  _ is  _ a book, but it’s not a novel or anything. It’s a relatively slim photo album, nicely embossed with a generic message. Curious, Rick opens the cover and finds torn pieces of a letter have been glued to the inside of it, signed with a familiar name.

“I didn’t have as many photos with your dad as I thought,” Pat says when he sees Rick has opened it, “but that should be all of them.”

Rick’s eyes unexpectedly start to burn with tears. He flips through the pages carefully, tracing over the faces. There’s his dad, leaning against his car. There’s both his parents, arm in arm in the background of a photo centered around a woman with a leather jacket and blond hair—her name was Black Canary, Rick’s pretty sure. There’s his dad with his arm around Pat’s shoulders. There’s his dad in his first costume. There’s a photo he can’t make out because of how blurry his vision suddenly is.

He looks up and tries very hard to say  _ thank you  _ but the words get caught somewhere in his throat. He really hopes Pat understands it anyway. He’s not sure if he can ever thank him enough for this. 

“I don’t think mine is as good by comparison,” Beth says quietly, and Rick automatically internally vows to love hers twice as much, “but I got this for you.”

The box is small, only a bit bigger than the one Courtney’s earrings came from. Keeping the album pressed safely to his chest, he opens it slowly and pushes against the rush of guilt he feels. This settles it. He  _ needs  _ to get Beth a gift by tomorrow night.

“I thought of it when I still had—before Chuck broke, and afterward it was hard for me to find because it wasn’t at the hall, and I had to talk to people at TylerCo and everything and then in the end Pat told me where it was, but…” She shifts nervously. “Do you like it?”

Rick almost reverently lifts the simple wooden hourglass by its leather cord. He recognizes it—how could he not, when he just saw it in one of the photos in the album? The hourglass he’d used first, back when it was still only a prototype, a signal of what was to come. Back when Rex Tyler had first stepped out as Hourman. He switched it out for another one after a few months, then for the one Rick now wears—bears as his own—a year later after it was destroyed. But this one, the first one, was never broken. Just put aside.

Before Beth, before Pat, Rick knows the last person to hold this was his dad. He squeezes it tightly and the wood almost feels warm. 

“I love it,” he finally manages to say. It’s strangled and squeakier than it should be but it still manages to come out. He presses it against his chest, right where the other hourglass rests against his breastbone. He looks at Beth and Pat and pretends he isn’t fully, really crying now. “Thanks. Thank you.”

He holds his gifts close while he watches Beth give Courtney hers and then shyly present Pat and Barb with theirs. He got a piece of his parents. He got a piece of his legacy. 

Rick doesn’t know how he’ll be able to thank Pat for inviting him. Not just for giving him the photos, but for inviting him. For letting him do something he hasn’t been able to do in years. Something that was taken away from him just like his parents were. He doesn’t know how he can even express how much that means to him. 

But maybe he’ll be able to find a way to thank Beth.

* * *

“Hey, Beth, Rick’s been asking for you,” Pat says, turning the paper he’s drawing on so he can see what notes Mike has been making on it. Mike immediately turns it back around to keep writing. Those pieces of the cosmic converter belt are still snug on his wrists. “He’s in the back room by himself, Yolanda and Court are practicing upstairs.”

“...Oh, okay.” Beth puts her backpack down in the little pile the other kids have already made with theirs. “I’ll go see him, then.”

Rick stops anxiously tapping his foot like he has been since Yolanda first gave him the heads-up that Beth was going to be late to training because she was staying after school to talk to one of her teachers about getting extra credit assigned to her. The longer he waits, the more he worries that his gift won’t be good. Or—actually, he  _ knows  _ it won’t be good, not compared to what she gave him, but he hopes she’ll like it anyway, and the longer she takes the more nervous he gets that she won’t.

Some of the tension eases when Beth comes in and immediately beams at him. She looks nice today. Very cozy in her warm sunset orange sweater decorated with little white stars. She pulls off her fuzzy gloves and kneads them in her hands as she tilts her head at him.

“Rick?”

He jumps a bit. Oh. She said something. “Sorry. Um, I just wanted to give you—” He fumbles for his pocket. “Here.”

He didn’t have anything to really wrap it with. So he just used a piece of bubblewrap that Pat had. His chest feels tight. He knows it’s not nearly as good as what she gave him. There’s none of the sentimental value. But he doesn’t have any money, even though Pat offered to lend him some to buy something for her, so he just tried to make something that he thought she would like and…

“Ooh!” Beth gingerly lifts up the paper-thin metal. “A bookmark!”

Rick nods, grateful that she recognized what it was right away. He’d already had the metal for it, he’d just needed Pat to help him cut it and give him the tools to properly engrave it.

Beth holds it up to the light to look at it better. “Did you draw this yourself?”

He nods again. “I, uh, I looked at some pictures of eagle-owls online, I tried to make it look like Hootie.” He swallows. “And there’s the moon because… Mid-nite… on the hood there’s that little…”

Oh, no. She doesn’t like it. He knows it’s not nearly as special as what she gave to him. There’s nothing he could get her that  _ is.  _ No way to capture that and return it that he can do. But maybe if she likes just… this tiny piece of something… She likes reading, she reads all the time, and she’s  _ their  _ Mid-nite, and she’s just… there’s nothing he could give her that’s good enough but this is the best he has.

“You’re a really good artist,” Beth says, awed. “You should try painting! This is really nice, Rick, I didn’t know you could draw like this, especially on metal. Have you done engraving before?”

Rick shakes his head. “Pat showed me. On scrap metal.”

He’d had to rush, to get it done before Beth showed up, but he’d  _ tried  _ to make it still come out the way it had in his head. The wings were hard, and so was the ring of feathers around the owl’s face, but they’d managed to come out okay so even if she doesn’t like it maybe he can still be proud of the effort that went in—

Beth latches onto him in a huge hug. Rick jolts from surprise, not worry, and hugs back because it’s  _ Beth. _

“I love it,” she says, muffled. “I really love it, Rick. It’s beautiful.”

This and the glove—she doesn’t know how to say it. How to make it come out the  _ right  _ way without the words getting all tangled in her mouth. And she really doesn’t want to get it wrong.

It’s silly.  _ Not  _ the bookmark from Rick, she loves it, she really does, as much as she’d love anything else that came from him and maybe even more because it’s obvious how careful he was when he made something for her  _ himself.  _ Sure, it was with Pat’s help, but she had Pat’s help for her gift for Rick, too.

What’s silly is just… how she feels about it. The almost nauseating wave of relief when she’d gotten the glove, something of her  _ own  _ that didn’t come from the real—from the first Doctor Mid-nite but was still irreversibly tied to him and to her following in his footsteps. This is different, but the owl, the moon with the waning crescent… it’s still  _ about  _ Doctor Mid-nite. And he put time and effort into it and into showing her that she was still theirs and—

She still has her place on the team. Being the one who couldn’t protect Chuck, a real sacred piece of the Justice Society’s legacy, hasn’t changed that. She’s still with them.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have it last night,” Rick tells her, still hugging. “I wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t…” He glances at the closed door. There’s a flicker of movement like someone with catlike reflexes was peeking through the window at them and ducked down when they saw him looking. “Thanks for covering for me last night. With the blessings.”

She looks up at him but doesn’t let go. “It’s okay that you didn’t have it last night. I didn’t tell you I’d have a gift for you. I just wanted you to have a nice night.” Now she steps back, hesitating, fidgeting with the string tassel Rick tied to a hole in the bookmark for this exact purpose. “...Would you want me to help you learn the blessings? For Hanukkah and for other days? I know most of them.”

Rick blinks at her. “You’d do that?”

Beth nods emphatically. She brushes the ends of the tassel across her palm. “Or I guess I’d be helping you re-remember them, not learn them for the first time. It’s just about reminding your brain that they’re still there, ‘cause it’s spent so long thinking about other really important things to keep you alive that it had to push other stuff out.”

She says it so simply and easily like she doesn’t even notice that Rick’s whole world has just clicked underneath him. Oh. That’s it, isn’t it?

“...I want you to tell me them,” he says quietly. Every time it hurts a little less, to admit vulnerability to someone. More like stitching up a wound than pulling out the bullet. “I tried to remember last night, but it just wouldn’t come  _ back.” _

Beth smiles and the whole garage feels brighter as she takes his arm. “Well, don’t worry. We’ve still got seven more.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much to Hedgi for coming up with Rick's gift to Beth when I was having trouble with anything beyond "he has to make it himself." And thanks to Sabrina for undergoing the deep dive and discovering that Cameron Gellman _is_ as Jewish as I immediately assumed he was.
> 
> The transliteration for the third blessing is a bit off because Courtney's mispronouncing it and/or using the wrong intonation, but she's doing her _best,_ dammit! My personal headcanon for her is that she probably converts later in life, simply because my mind is huge and nobody can stop me.
> 
> I'm @augustheart on tumblr, and I want Geoff Johns to look me dead in the eyes and try to tell me with a straight face that Pat "got enslaved in ancient Egypt that one time for basically no reason" Dugan isn't Jewish.


End file.
